Top 50

Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers: The Rules of Engagement

In this month’s Top 50 Movers and Shakers: The Rules of Engagement we’re not talking about military tactics, or the TV show starring David Spade. We’re going to be taking a closer look at the Microsoft partners who have been nailing audience engagement.

As a business, engaging with your audience in a meaningful way builds trust and brand loyalty. It’s about how you interact with people via your content on social media, how responsive you are etc. So, let’s see who was making moves in October:

October’s Movers and Shakers

The formula that measures engagement in our Top 50 takes into account our Microsoft partners’ social channels, how much engagement they receive in likes, shares, comments and all the signifiers of a successful social engagement strategy.

Content + Cloud

At the head of the pack, it’s Content + Cloud, who took a huge leap up the engagement table this month, with a 22.9 point surge from 57.1 to 80. We were pretty blown away by this, so we asked Digital Marketing Manager, Faye Waghorn, what her secret is.

“Avoid posting for the sake of posting. Too many organisations are set on posting set amounts of times in a day or week, which can ultimately lead to the content you put out being sub-par. In my opinion, I would rather the team went a day without posting than gap filling with repetitive or irrelevant content”.

One way that Faye and the team have been nurturing engagement on LinkedIn is via monthly live ‘Meet the Expert’ sessions. Since starting the campaign last year, Content + Cloud have seen almost a 400% increase in followers over 9 months.

Finally, Faye shared her take on how to be heard above the background noise of social media.

“It's easy to get lost in a social network feed filled with over-used images and generic captions. So, dare to take some risks and stand out a little.”

Content + Cloud provides complete tailored digital transformations for businesses of all sizes. Their four-step approach; Transform, Evolve, Secure, Support, helps organizations to build sustainable transformation strategies that stick.

Encore Business Solutions

Encore Business Solutions are up 12.5 points from an engagement score of 35.7 to 50. They also moved up into joint 37th position alongside Kinetix Solutions with an overall score of 60/100. Well done, team! Keep up the good work.

Encore Business Solutions guide businesses through ERP, CRM and cloud transformation, as well as help with Azure and the Power Platform. They also offer pre-made Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions. Basically, if it’s Microsoft, they can help.

Plesk

Plesk also boosted their engagement score from 37.5 to 50 this month, putting them in 36th place overall. Their content, SEO and engagement scores are all on the uptick, so it’ll be interesting to see what they can do in the future.

Plesk’s flagship server management platform, Obsidian, gives you everything you need to build, secure and run your digital projects. It features over 100 extensions for specialist functionality and can be used by IT admins, web designers, developers and pretty much anyone who might need it.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise still maintain the top spot when it comes to social engagement. With a consistently high score each month, they’re dominating the engagement rankings right now. They’ve been at a steady 83.3 for some time thanks to a robust and well managed social strategy that puts customers first. They’ve really become the benchmark for engagement in our Top 50.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise are digital transformation and cloud experts. Whether it’s data storage as a service, compute as a service, network as a service, or software, HPE are highly knowledgeable in all things cloud. 

Ledgeview Partners’ approach to social media interaction

It was a good month for Ledgeview Partners too, bringing them ever closer to the Top 50. Why is social media engagement important to them? We asked Digital Marketing Specialist, Julia Flaherty:

“LinkedIn is a place where we show and celebrate Ledgeview's core values, where we strive to provide a ‘business and technology education’ to our audience, and where we go to build and maintain meaningful relationships.”

Julia highlighted the importance of allowing your brand to have fun on LinkedIn, and how generating engaging content for social media is a whole-team effort. She said, “This exemplifies the authenticity of our brand and the character of our team.”

Finally, Julia spoke about the similarities between B2B and B2C and how they are often misconstrued as being in completely different stratospheres.

“We aren't just marketing to businesses – we're marketing to people. We're discussing with them, collaborating with them, and connecting with them.”

How do you compare?

Check in with our Top 50 Movers and Shakers each month to see how you compare with these social engagement masters. Or you can take a look at our live Microsoft Partner Top 50 leader board for more up to date results.

Want to appear among the Top 50? We can help you improve your engagement, create better content, and boost your SEO. Get in touch to find out how.

by Ben Greenwood

Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers: Masters of Content

It’s all about content in this month’s Top 50 Movers and Shakers special. Why? Because content marketing is a great way to increase organic traffic and generate conversions. If you have doubts, then check out our guide, invest in a content marketing strategy, and track the results over time.

Content, content, content! We miss you, Ballmer.

Content is an important pillar in B2B content marketing agency Fifty Five and Five’s Microsoft Partner Top 50, which ranks Microsoft partners based on the quality of their inbound marketing efforts. In this post, we present the latest highlights from the Microsoft partners who’ve made significant strides in their content scores over the last few months.

September’s Top Movers and Shakers

A Microsoft partner’s content score in the Top 50 looks at how well written their content is across all channels, as well as how easy it is to understand and consume. We’ll start by highlighting the great work of four Microsoft partners who’ve made impressive moves in the content department in September’s Top 50 scoreboard. Those partners are:

• Beezy

Beezy have been flying high with a great content score for a number of months, but August and September have been particularly exceptional. In terms of overall position in the Top 50, Beezy have been ranking in double digits for a long time, but officially entered the single digit rankings in August. As of writing, they sit at #5 in the Top 50. Great work, team!

Beezy is an all-in-one Intelligent Workplace solution for Office 365. They help large, global enterprises like Monster, Bank of England and ZF to bring together Collaboration, Communication, Knowledge, and Processes.

• CodeTwo

Alongside Beezy, CodeTwo entered the Top 50 for the first time in August. Their current overall rank is #38 and their content score has improved dramatically in the last few months (yes, we rank companies before they enter the Top 50 too!) Congratulations, CodeTwo! Onwards and upwards.

CodeTwo really express themselves on their homepage in a refreshing, and refreshingly simple, manner. They have coupled a simple opening statement of what they do with the backdrop of rolling footage of (what looks like) their actual office and employees, their customers and what they do for them. You could sit at this juncture of the website and understand who they are without having to navigate anywhere. Except maybe to the contact button. An excellent example of efficient communication.

• Clear Measure

Clear Measure entered the Top 50 for the first time in September after months of climbing the ranks. Currently, their content score is the highest it’s ever been and their overall position in the Top 50 is #26. We want to see you in the top 25 next time, Clear Measure! You’ve got this.

Clear Measure is a software design and DevOps consulting firm. Since its inception, it has grown into one of the fastest-growing technology services companies in Central Texas and in 2016, it was #1 on Austin Fast 50, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in Central Texas. If you need to automate software delivery, modernize your current applications, build a new application or migrate to the cloud, these are services we offer to help you develop, deploy and manage with confidence.

• Xperience Group

Xperience Group have long been on the border of the Top 50, sometimes making it in and sometimes missing just slightly. However, Xperience Group have now been in the Top 50 since August and have cemented a solid position for themselves at #28. Their content scores have been excellent, and we’re seeing consistent improvement. Solid work, team! Definitely a riser.

Xperience work with some of the UK and Ireland’s biggest brands, partnering with world leaders in technology to provide best-in-class digital transformation solutions across Cloud, Managed IT, CRM, and ERP. For a company comprised of digital experts, it's no surprise to see web and social assets that are eye-catching and informative. Check out their blog or LinkedIn profile to see what we're talking about.

BEMO on stellar content

This blog series aims to provide unique insight for Microsoft partners to help them achieve marketing success. This month, BEMO achieved their highest ever content score and best overall rank, currently sitting at #34.

Experts in cybersecurity and all things Microsoft 365, BEMO enable any small or medium-sized organization to conduct business securely in today's connected world. Visting BEMO's website for the first time, you'll come to appreciate the transparency offered when it comes to product pricing. Their cost calculator will ask a few questions about your needs and provide you with an upfront total cost – so you can either get in touch to learn more or continue with your search elsewhere. We love the transparency for potential customers – which is perhaps why BEMO isn't afraid to shout about their high star rating on Trustpilot either. Their blog and social channels are also filled to the brim with insights and useful content.

We spoke to Steve Gershik, Vice President of Marketing at BEMO, to find out their secret behind top-notch content:

"One of our goals as a business is to operate in a radically transparent way.  We use tools like SEMRush to help us with the technical aspects of attracting traffic to our blog, but our content strategy is about providing our customers with everything they could possibly know, do or think about when it comes to making effective use of the Microsoft Cloud."

Customers come first for Mercury xRM

Mercury xRM are another high-flyer in the Microsoft Partner Top 50. Mercury xRM have dramatically improved their content score over the last few months, and their current overall rank is #30.

Mercury xRM’s homepage performs that difficult balancing act of keeping the right information simple and not designing a boring website. Their website has a dynamic feel to it which is consistent throughout the site, the blog and social channels.

We reached out to Daniel Fox, Marketing Manager at Mercury xRM to understand what makes Mercury xRM’s content so successful.

"Our content, much like all our marketing, is formed by listening to the customer.  Understanding their needs, concerns and areas of interest gets you halfway there on the journey to writing engaging material. We plan our content in advance.  We find that having a plan that runs a month or so out allows us to continuously review and improve and react to unexpected opportunities that arise."

Are you in?

That’s it for this month’s edition of the Top 50 Movers and Shakers blog. Save our monthly updated Top 50 Microsoft partners site to see how you and other organisations in your space rank in terms of the quality of your inbound marketing efforts.

At Fifty Five and Five, we help technology companies grow their business, drive brand awareness and achieve their marketing goals. If you need help with your digital marketing, get in touch with the team today.

by Stephen Reilly

Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers: SEO Leaders

And just like that, another month passes us by. As summers go, it’s been a damp one. To awaken us from our damp stupor then, let’s shake things up with a slightly different look at this month’s Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers: the SEO Leaders.

We use a number of factors to determine the standings of our Top 50 – from content quality to social engagement. It all adds up to give a better understanding of how successful a company’s approach to marketing is. One of the key metrics taken into account is search engine optimisation (SEO). Everything that helps your website rank more highly on search engines is included in here.

But what makes for a good SEO performance? How do you boost your rankings? And is SEO worth it? We spoke to some of the partners with the best SEO scores in the Top 50 to find out.

How QorusDocs built their SEO foundation

QorusDocs is a proposal management software company, intent on streamlining the proposal process for businesses around the world. They’re currently in a solid 22nd place in our Top 50 and have the second highest SEO score of any of the partners.

We spoke to Jennifer Tomlinson, EVP of Marketing at QorusDocs and asked for the best search engine optimisation techniques. She responded:

“I’m a big believer in SEO and PPC in general, so we invested in a specialized performance marketing function that helps us navigate the ever-changing rules.”

Qorus rebranded to QorusDocs in April 2021. The company domain had always been Qorusdocs.com, so making the move to a standardised name and domain helped solidify the brand. This meant building a new website that is kept to current navigation and UX best practices.

“This really helped us set a new foundation for growth in SEO and with our PPC efforts…standardising on brand really helps everything function better.”

Jennifer emphasised the importance of taking a holistic approach, not just focussing on traffic or conversion rates on the website, but the number of conversations and conversions across all digital and social advertising.

“We closely monitor our SEO reports and advertising data to optimise, not just for great traffic but also for valuable conversions… This is how we gauge whether we are doing a good job each month with our investment in these areas.”

Consistency is key for LS Retail

LS Retail currently sit 41st in the Top 50 rankings, and with a solid 81.1 score in SEO, they’re in the higher echelons when it comes to search engine optimisation techniques. We reached out to Eloise Freygang, CMO at LS Retail to hear how they are improving their search performance and driving leads:

“During the past years, we have consistently worked on our website, with beautiful webpages and a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search. Also, we have put a lot of effort into driving traffic to our website, and the results are mostly due to the quality of the content that we produce.”

As Eloise also mentions, it isn’t possible to build a brand’s trust and credibility overnight. In the world of SEO, just like in real life, building a solid base of reliability takes time and effort, there aren’t any shortcuts.

“We have been steadily increasing organic traffic thanks to improvements and optimisation techniques applied to our own website, and other initiatives to improve our site's popularity, relevance, trustworthiness and authority”

This improvement in SEO also goes hand in hand with PPC. LS Retail continues to steadily increase paid search year after year, with a large effort going into creating and optimizing campaigns to increase lead generation. Eloise also spoke about the importance of content SEO:

“Content marketing is a cornerstone of our SEO efforts. We focus on quality and value rather than quantity, but we still produce and release a steady amount of new content in the form of blogs, product videos, white papers, customer stories and videos, web pages, and campaigns with third party thought leaders.”

Beyond this, social media marketing has proved to be an invaluable tool in LS Retail’s growth, reach, and brand recognition strategy. Paid campaigns on LinkedIn and Facebook have been key to some of the impressive results they’ve seen.

How Chorus stay ahead with SEO

Chorus are also at the head of the course when it comes to SEO. Lisa Treasure, Head of Marketing, talks us through their approach and what benefits the team has seen as a result of their search engine optimisation techniques.

“SEO is a significant component of our digital marketing strategy. A few key ways we ensure good SEO performance is to focus on great content, continuous optimisation and technical SEO.”

Lisa and the team know that keyword research and the right meta titles and descriptions are all vital, but what it all boils down to is creating content that people find valuable and engaging.

“We focus on creating articles and webpages that answer our audience’s questions and link to relevant resources, which naturally leads to increased backlinks, conversions and a higher domain authority”

Although great content is a crucial to achieving good SEO, continual input and other ‘On-Page’ SEO work is still required. Lisa expressed the importance of technical SEO practices:

“We have a range of analytics and SEO tools in place (e.g. Google Analytics, Moz) to track performance and optimise pages, using SEO best practices such as optimised page titles and meta descriptions, compressed images with alt tags, and good internal/external linking”

Getting the basics right is crucial for any SEO expert. It’s important to continually check to make sure theses benchmarks are being met. This ensures that all the hard work you put into your content is worthwhile.

“We make sure we review and optimise areas such as our site structure, XML sitemap, site speed, mobile usability, and we crawl for errors and fix them so that our site remains optimised.”

Check out the Microsoft Partner Top 50 and see how you compare

How does your search engine performance compare to these SEO leaders? Need help making your pages rank more highly? Looking for a hand with SEO optimised content? Get in touch and we’ll see how we can help.

Keep checking our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other partners are doing. To be one of the top-ranking Microsoft partners our list, you just need a good plan of action – a thoughtful strategy, a fool-proof schedule, and the resources (i.e. people with the right skills) to carry it out consistently. If you need help with any of your digital marketing, get in contact and we’ll be happy to help.

by James Woods

The Microsoft Partner Top 50 Movers and Shakers for July

July was a busy month for us here at Fifty Five and Five. Microsoft blessed us with a whole host of exciting announcements at their annual partner conference, Inspire; the team began returning to the office as restrictions in England started to ease (we even added some new office plants); and we also welcomed a new Writer to the team.

The hustle and bustle never stops apparently – and we quite like it that way! So, it will come as no surprise to you that our all-digital Microsoft Partner Top 50 also saw some significant movement among partners in July’s scores on the doors. Shall we take a look?

July’s Top Movers and Shakers

We’ll start by highlighting some of the great work demonstrated by four Microsoft partners as they made some impressive gains in this month’s Top 50. Those partners are:

• Aptify

Aptify made the biggest leap in July’s Top 50, moving up 76 places to rank #26 at the time of this blog post. Now that’s an accomplishment to be proud of. Great work, Aptify!

Founded in 1993, Aptify has years of experience providing powerful, flexible and comprehensive Association and Membership Management Software solutions globally.

• Adatis

Similarly, Adatis made significant gains, moving up 72 places to rank #21 at the end of July –  just behind Aptify. Still, this level of growth a seriously impressive feat. A huge well done.

Adatis are a specialist Data Analytics Consultancy and trusted Microsoft partner, who help organisations unlock the power and value from their data to enable them to improve business performance, better serve and engage customers, empower employees, find efficiencies, and remain compliant.

• Blue Horseshoe

Blue Horseshoe entered the Top 50 for the very first time at the end of June. Since then, they’ve consistently ranked in the top 45, ranking as high as #23 and now ranking around #30. Considering they’ve were ranking around #100 at the start of 2021, you can colour us impressed.

Blue Horseshoe empowers business transformation where it counts most. They help companies define and plan their enterprise strategy, connect and collaborate with business applications, and optimize and execute supply chain operations.

• Concurrency

Again, Concurrency were ranking in the #100s at the start of 2021, and only entered Top 50 for the first time in May. They have since been climbing the ranks, and have now been ranking in the Top 30 since the start of July. Very solid work.

Founded in 1989, Concurrency is a business and technology professional services firm driving technology innovation and organizational change management.

Encore on a “culture of content contributors”

The aim of this blog series is to provide insight for Microsoft Partners to help them achieve marketing success. Encore have consistently demonstrated their marketing excellence in the Microsoft Partner Top 50 – so we spoke to their VP of Marketing, Natalie Armstrong, to find out the secret behind their top-notch content.

Hi Natalie. Congrats on shooting into the Top 15! Tell us – what is your secret weapon for such great quality content?

“We’ve created a culture of content contributors at Encore. All our team members feel a sense of responsibility to share their knowledge in their individual areas of expertise. The ongoing collaboration with our inhouse SMEs has enabled us to sustain such a high volume of relevant and high-quality blog content over the last 3+ years.”

Great stuff. How do you keep your content driving people back?

“As well as sourcing new content we also spend a considerable amount of effort reviewing and updating older popular pieces of content that drive conversions. In addition to prioritizing our time and energy on optimizing content and users page experiences we dedicate time and budget dollars on our marketing technology and using it to help drive results and dictate our next decisions.”

Thanks, Natalie!

Where do you rank?

That’s it for the July edition of our Top 50 Movers and Shakers blog. Bookmark our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other Microsoft partners rank in the month ahead. And hey – you could even feature in August’s post!

At Fifty Five and Five, we help technology companies grow their business, drive brand awareness and achieve their marketing goals. If you need help with your digital marketing, get in touch with the team today.

by James Woods

The Microsoft Partner Top 50 movers and shakers for June

The month of June is one of our favourites here at Fifty Five and Five. For starters, it’s officially summer, Pride is all month long and the sport of tennis drops into our lives for two weeks thanks to Wimbledon. And this June, we’ve also been enjoying the European Football Championships. What’s not to love?

So, in our mad summer haze of love and sport, we wanted to give a shoutout to a couple of Microsoft Partner Top 50 table success stories:

• Rencore
• Centric Consulting

If you are unfamiliar with it, the Microsoft partner Top 50 is where we and our exclusive algorithm position top ranking Microsoft partners according to the strength of their digital marketing. We look at their inbound marketing output: their website, blog and social media presence.

Want a comprehensive look at the Top 50 up until now?

Just in case you missed it, we covered the first half of the year (what, already!?) in a recent article. You can read it right here.

Two partners in profile

For a special June shoutout, we look at two top ranking Microsoft partners who have been consistently in our table and continue to either punch above their weight, and/or market themselves in line with their company values to great effect. Competing in a crowded field with much larger organisations is not easy, but Rencore do it with aplomb. Meanwhile, Centric Consulting are masters of building a brand voice.

Rencore

Headquartered in Munich, Germany and consistently growing since 2013, Rencore are experts when it comes to Microsoft 365 governance, “empowering everyone to reach business goals without friction.” The business is focused on helping customers stay in control of their Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint Online and Azure investments via the Rencore Platform solution.

For a team of 25 people in 2018, they pack a serious marketing punch and are a tremendously successful example of what good inbound marketing can do. At the time of writing they are in 11th place on our list, ahead of much larger brands like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Rackspace, not to mention rival (and former Top 50 kingpin) ShareGate).

Rencore have the classic inbound marketing strategy patter down. Their website is clear and concise. They know their audience and the kind of content they will appreciate. At times, their content can be highly technical, but they are gifted at balancing being experts with being digestible – and dare we say... fun?

"We have an incredibly talented in-house team who work in a well-fostered, creative environment for producing new content ideas and designs and tailor them to our marketing channels and campaigns. In busy periods, we reach out to Fifty Five and Five to help support that effort, and they fit in seamlessly."

-        Matthias Einig, CEO and Co-founder at Rencore

Centric Consulting

Based in 14 locations across the United States, Centric Consulting provide top quality digital, business and technology consulting primarily focusing on business resilience and continuity. Something that’s ever more important in this day and age.

A company that began as an idea between three friends and grew organically from their living room before ever setting foot in an office, Centric are another terrific digital disruption success story. And their essential approach of “enjoying the people you work with, having fun and doing great work” is something that infiltrates its way into their marketing, too. Their position at 44th place, out of tens of thousands of partners, speaks to this core set of values. They have a top SEO score coupled with an almost equally excellent content score. Hop on to their website and be immediately engaged.

"For Centric Consulting, great content is rooted in three fundamentals. First, be timely and relevant, which includes paying close attention to the needs of customers and the market in general. Second, provide unique, helpful perspectives that provide value – arm your audience with information to elevate their work. And third, apply marketing fundamentals to everything – optimize all content for search, leverage a variety of marketing channels, and have a strategic plan that guides all activity."

-        Misty Walsh, National Marketing Director at Centric Consulting

Check out the Microsoft Partner Top 50 and see how you compare

Keep checking our continuously updated Top 50 Microsoft Partners to see how you and other partners are doing. To be one of the top-ranking Microsoft partners our list, you just need a good plan of action – a thoughtful strategy, a fool-proof schedule, and the resources (i.e. people with the right skills) to carry it out consistently. If you need help with any of your digital marketing, get in contact and we’ll be happy to help.

by Stephen Reilly